Sundown: Fiction Stranger than Truth

• James Frey, no stranger to self-exaggeration, is working on a novel called Illumination: The Last Testament of the Holy Bible, about an Orthodox Jew who thinks he’s God’s gift—literally, as in the Messiah. [NYT]
• A high school in Washington state prohibited students from forming a school-sponsored Bible club, partially because members “would have to pledge to Jesus Christ to vote.” (Technically, some would argue that such a rule doesn’t exclude all Jews.) The Supreme Court rejected the student group’s appeal to overturn the school’s decision. [WTOP]
• A new study shows that Yemenite Jews are more susceptible to and likely to get more severe cases of Parkinson’s Disease than Ashkenazis, possibly as a result of chewing the hallucinogenic khat plant. There’s no mention of the stats among other Sephardic Jews however, so the results might be a bit misleading. [Haaretz]
• Ezra Nawi, a gay Israeli plumber from an Iraqi Jewish family, spends his time helping Palestinians defend their space and livelihood from settlers. He’s looking at jail time for hitting a cop, a crime he denies. [NYT]